


Jack vs. Twitter

by esljackzimmermann (QuietLittleVoices)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M, Twitter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 12:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4391072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuietLittleVoices/pseuds/esljackzimmermann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>....AKA, five times Twitter broke Jack and one time Jack broke Twitter.</p>
<p>“If the internet is just - just people saying things like that about other people, then I don't really get the appeal,” Jack admitted. “You don’t seem to be too into celebrity gossip, so where’s the... the appeal for you? What else is there?” He turned towards his friend, genuinely curious.<br/>“First off, Mr. Zimmermann, the internet is not just gossip. Sure, there’s a lot of that and that’s a lot of what people see but... there’s more than that.” He paused to think; he wanted to make sure that he said this correctly. “I stayed out of the celebrity stuff mostly, growing up, and stayed in forums for discussions of more personal issues. For a gay kid growing up in Georgia, it was the first place where I didn’t have to lie about who I was. And that was kinda amazing.” Bittle gave Jack a wide-eyed look, trying to urge him with mind-control or something to see where he was coming from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jack vs. Twitter

**Author's Note:**

> Comments give me life; I always appreciate concrit as long as you're respectful :-)

1

Jack joined Twitter on a Thursday while he was at Annie’s with Bitty. Admittedly, Bittle was the one who set up the entire account because Jack couldn’t even figure out how to download the app, but it was still his account, connected to his e-mail address and everything. His handle was ‘JackZ15’, which he figured was easy enough that at least he won’t forget his username. His e-mail and the fact that he even had an account to start with were two different matters, but he planned to just ignore that because the way Bittle grinned as he set it up was worth it.

“Do you want me to tell my followers you’ve joined the twitter’verse?” Bitty asked cheerfully, sipping his coffee.

Jack shrugged. “Sure. Why not.”

Bitty started tapping away on his phone and Jack took the moment of distraction to watch him without the fear of being caught staring. Within seconds, though, his phone was buzzing repeatedly and he looked at it in alarm. “Why's it doing that?”

Bittle reached over and snatched the phone from him, taking a look at the pop-up notifications that had appeared on his lock screen. “New followers,” he told Jack happily. He swiped the phone open (Jack always swore that one day he'd set up a password, but he'd never gotten around to it. He rarely used his phone anyway, and it sat powerd off in the bottom of his hockey bag most of the time). “It says you already have thirty. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Without warning, Bitty tilted the phone up and snapped a picture of Jack. “For your profile pic,” he explained, tapping away at the phone again and doing things that Jack didn’t understand. When he finished, he turned the phone back towards Jack. “You should make your first tweet.”

Jack bit his lip and looked down at the keyboard in concentration before typing out a simple message.

“Are you serious, Jack Zimmermann?” Bittle asked just moments after Jack hit the post button. “Your first tweet ever is ‘hello’. Have I taught you nothing?”

Jack shrugged again. “I’m not really interesting.”

Bitty raised an eyebrow. “My followers think that you’re interesting. They always ask me what you’re up to.”

“What do you tell them?”

“The truth. You’re normally out skating, or at the library, or watching those awful, boring war documentaries….” Bitty trailed off with a grin and Jack kicked him lightly under the table.

“I get it, I’m boring.”

Bitty shrugged and took a sip of his coffee. “I wouldn’t say boring exactly, just.... predictable.”

“That doesn't sound any better.”

“It’s not a bad thing,” he promised. “I like it, personally. I mean I -”

Jack felt himself smile. “Thanks, Bittle.”

Bitty returned the smile shyly.

 

2

“Bittle?” Jack called, walking out of his room with his phone in hand. He could hear music coming from the first floor and realized that Bitty probably couldn’t hear him over it, so he walked downstairs and poked his head into the kitchen. “Hey.”

Bitty jumped and looked at him with wide eyes, one hand slapped over his heart. “Jack! Don’t sneak up on me like that. Nearly gave me a heart attack.” He shook his head and turned back towards the oven. “Why did you walk in here anyway? Not that I don’t appreciate the company, but it seems like you’re a man on a mission right now.”

“Yeah, uhm…” he scratched the back of his neck. “I keep getting this notification on my phone but I don't know where it’s coming from?”

The blond sighed good naturedly as he put a pie in the oven. He stood up when he was done and put his hand out for Jack’s phone, which was handed over gratefully.

Bittle swiped and typed away for a few seconds before turning the screen back towards Jack. “It was a DM.”

“A... what?”

“Direct message - Twitters’ messaging system. Like a private tweet to just one person. Looks like your dad DM’d you - I didn’t know he had twitter, by the way. It’s a verified account though so it’s him and not some parody or fake.”

Jack just nodded along as Bittle babbled. “Yeah, he does. He’s more into... technology than I am.”

“Do you want me to type a reply or can you handle that on your own?” Bitty chirped.

Jack rolled his eyes and took the phone back, typing a quick response and hitting send. “I'm not totally hopeless, you know. This is just like... texting.”

Bittle sighed and reached up (and up and up) to lay a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “You have much to learn, young Padawan.”

 

3

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Bitty chirped as Jack let himself into his room.

“I replied to someone and now they're freaking out.” He held the phone out and tried not to stare as Bitty scrubbed a hand over his face and through his hair. He failed miserably on that count.

“Hand it over,” Bittle ordered, so Jack did. As usual, Bitty tapped away at the phone doing things that Jack didn’t understand and was certain that he’d never be able to replicate. He had gotten the hang of ‘DMing’ though, and he was quite proud of that.

Bitty handed the phone back after a minute. “Don’t worry about it - keysmashing is just internet speak for excitement.”

“I’m - what?”

“You replied to this person,” Bitty said, pointing at the screen, “and they replied with this,” indicating the tweet that had brought Jack into Bitty’s room before ten in the morning on a Saturday. “Which is a keysmash. Nonsensical typing, if you will,” he clarified with a faux-intellectual tone. It sounded even more ridiculous with his natural accent seeping through. “It just means that they’re very happy that you replied to them, and they probably weren’t thinking about the fact that you could see the reply. Or maybe they thought it would get lost in your notifications, I don't know. But, yeah. Excitement.”

Jack nodded. “So it’s... good?”

Bittle shrugged. “Yeah, mostly. I mean, if you keep replying and being a darling like that then you might give a few poor teenage girls heart attacks but it’ll be fine.”

“Are you saying I should be less nice?”

“No - it’s really important for public figures or pseudo-famous people to be nice on social media but just don’t freak out if someone replies to you saying something like ‘I’m literally dead’. It’s just internet speak.”

Jack bit his lip. “I think I understand now. The internet is weird.”

Bitty laughed. “We already knew that.”

 

4

“I don't think that I like the internet,” Jack muttered as Bitty walked into his room cautiously.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Jack shrugged but didn’t tell him to leave so Bitty took that as a good sign and climbed up onto Jack's bed with him, pressing their sides together so that they were shoulder to shoulder.

They sat like that in silence before Jack sighed. “It was an article that some news station tweeted, but they decided to... ‘at mention’ me in it?” His voice turned up the end of his sentence, indicating that he wasn’t sure if that was the correct terminology.

“Most people just say ‘mention’ usually. But yeah, I saw that. I have mentions of you tracked.”

Jack looked over questioningly and Bitty just shrugged. “I’ve got your back,” he explained, and Jack nodded. To him, it seemed totally logical.

They fell back into silence until Bitty asked, "You sure that you don’t want to talk about it? I won’t push, but....”

Jack bit the inside of his cheek and shook his head. Bitty leaned against his shoulder and though Jack didn’t outwardly react, he appreciated the comforting pressure. “I know that what they say doesn't change what I know about myself and my friends, but it still - stings, you know?”

Bitty nodded even though he didn’t, really.

“If the internet is just - just people saying things like that about other people, then I don't really get the appeal,” Jack admitted. “You don’t seem to be too into celebrity gossip, so where’s the... the appeal for you? What else is there?” He turned towards his friend, genuinely curious.

“First off, Mr. Zimmermann, the internet is not just gossip. Sure, there’s a lot of that and that’s a lot of what people see but... there’s more than that.” He paused to think; he wanted to make sure that he said this correctly. “I stayed out of the celebrity stuff mostly, growing up, and stayed in forums for discussions of more personal issues. For a gay kid growing up in Georgia, it was the first place where I didn’t have to lie about who I was. And that was kinda amazing.” Bittle gave Jack a wide-eyed look, trying to urge him with mind-control or something to see where he was coming from.

“That makes sense,” Jack admitted. “I could’a used that, as if I could ever get away with being anonymous.” He scoffed. “Not really in the cards for me, but it’s good to know the internet can help people, too.”

Bittle rested his head back on Jack’s shoulder and this time, Jack moved to lean his head on top of Bittle’s.

 

5

“Hey, I saw that you got verified!” Bittle said excitedly, sidling up next to him in the Lake Quad.

Jack nodded, taking a sip from his coffee cup. “My dad did it for me, but yeah.”

“I can now say that I'm friends with someone who’s verified on Twitter.” Jack wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a chirp. “I’m pretty sure that you can’t get on my case about tweeting too much now, though. I noticed you were up pretty late last night online.” Jack was pretty sure that that was supposed to be chirp.

“I thought you said it was okay to interact with my - my audience, or my followers. Whatever it’s called.”

Bitty laughed. “Yeah, but not until two in the morning.”

“Why do you even know that I was on twitter then?” Jack hopped that the reason merited chirping.

“It’s called scrolling, Jack. And timestamps.” Bittle smirked, knowing that he’d ruined a chirping opportunity for Jack.

“At least I don’t tweet pictures of my coffee,” he returned, hoping that that was enough of comeback to keep his chirp-cred.

Bittle rolled his eyes. “I'll have you know, all pictures of coffee end up on Instagram, not Twitter.”

Jack wasn’t sure what, exactly, Instagram was and he was too afraid to ask. Twitter was enough social media for at least a year.

 

+1

It wasn’t an accident, like some people would later theorize. Yes, it was a picture posted without a caption, but Jack didn't think that the picture required a caption - or accompanying tweet, as if would be.

The picture was a ‘selfie’ as Bittle had explained to him, one that the blonde had taken using Jack’s phone. He was smiling at the camera while Jack had his head turned, his lips pressed against the other’s cheek.

Ever since Jack had signed with a team, he’d been open with the PR team about the nature of his relationship with Bittle, despite how new it had been at the time, and that he did intend to come out publicly one day. They were now halfway through the season, and there had been talk but he didn’t feel that he was ready just yet. The Providence PR team, luckily, said that as soon as he was ready they could have an official statement ready to go for him.

The unlucky side for the Providence PR team was that Jack realized he was ready on a weekend spent at the Haus watching Bittle bake in the kitchen. And then together they had just posted the picture of them like that, knowing that most people would recognize it as romantic, without consulting Jack’s PR people.

It wasn’t until another hour later that Bitty retweeted it and then wrote a tweet that confirmed to the world that they were dating - followed by many exclamation points and blushing faces. Jack also tweeted a confirmation before calling back all the PR people that had been trying to reach him and apologizing.

He couldn’t find it within himself to be really sorry.


End file.
